When your home is also your office

03.06.2014

Having your office at your home or right next door can be really great. It saves a lot of time and it also can boost your productivity as work from the comfort of your own house. However, it can also be quite tricky when you have to meet partners or clients. You have to maintain the professional appearance of the office environment or you can leave an impression of a person who is not serious enough about his work. If you seem unreliable, it is not very likely that your business will be very successful.

In order to be sure that everything goes smoothly, follow these simple rules:

Don’t mix your professional and personal life – when you are at the premises of what is your office, dedicate your time and attention to work only. Don’t take away something from your office and go to do your job in the living room while you are waiting for the dishwasher. Or don’t bring any food into the office in order to “optimise” your lunch break. If you do this, a lot of things from your home will end up in the place where you meet your partners and vice versa. Keeping professional and personal parts of your life separate is the best way to show you are well-organised.

Maintaining a clean workplace – this can be quite hard. At home you can give yourself a break from the daily chores every once in a while. However, when it comes to work, this is unacceptable. You need to tidy the room where you welcome your clients/customers on a daily basis. It is essential in order to impress them. If it’s necessary request professional cleaning service and save your time and efforts.

Business gatherings – if your home is also your office, you are most probably running a small one-person business. This means that a lot of your customers are also your friends, neighbours, close acquaintances or people that you have worked with for long years. When this is the case and you have to organise some kind of business event for a group of your clients, most of them would expect to be invited to your home. The personal rapport is probably what has brought you and keeps you together. You have to plan and prepare such gatherings / parties very well. It’s not just your friends that you need to get ready for, these are the people that you work for. If you are not confident enough about your skills as a host, you can hire a local cleaning company to do the office cleaning for you. Order the food from a catering company. Just try to keep things simple, just like your business.

How many of you use their homes as offices too? Do you have your own rules? Share them with us.